I'm currently comtemplating auditioning for Atlanta Lyric Theatre. I'm excited and scared to death. I haven't been in a play in almost 5 years. I've auditioned for a church choir and an a cappella group in that time, successfully, but that was 4 years ago. Most plays/musicals for which I've auditioned didn't require monologues or prepared pieces. I know I can do this, though. I prepared material for my audition for Governor's School way back in high school, and it was more involved than this.
I think part of the reason I broke away from theatre is that I felt like I wasn't being real. I spent so much time trying to become someone who was an actress, and forgot about that part where I become myself. I think I'd be a better actress now, having matured a bit, and having actually life experience now. Before, I was living a very sheltered life, comparitively-speaking. I'm also a lot more outgoing than I was before. I also think I am better at following directions.
Anyhow, what to prepare? I have a few pieces selected. It's funny. In our a cappella group, it isn't so much what our auditioners sing, it's more important that they demonstrate that they CAN sing. It matters a lot more. I'm trying to keep that in mind and not stress over my selections! I also don't want to choose the same pieces as everyone else, so I'll probably stay away from shows that toured here or put on in Atlanta recently. Still, it's hard to decide.
I hope that I can juggle my coaching and work responsibilities around it all, too.
We shall see what we shall see!
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Friday, February 29, 2008
Green kitchen to come! (Or, Painting woes may be at an end)
Hooray! We've finally thrown in the towel!
I know it's unusual to celebrate defeat, but I'm doing just that. Our kitchen, lovely and wonderful as it is, has been the source of much frustration in the Henschen household as of late. We tried to paint the walls of the kitchen a golden yellow, and we tried two different shades: Behr's Goldfish and then Behr's Yam. Both went on the wall with as much ease as you'd expect when you try to lift a 300 lb greased pig. Yep, you get the idea. It looked like pooh.
We gave up once and went back to white primer, instead of going forth with our golden mess. It was around this time that I started dropping strong hints that I wasn't sold on the gold. It just didn't seem to flow as well in our color scheme/design plan as we had orginally anticipated. It seemed too bright, too off-palate. It did not go at all with the painting we used to select the other colors. Josef has had a lot of travel for work, so I've been on my own with the kitchen being out of sorts. I decided to give the paint color one more try, just to see if maybe it would mellow out and blend well with the other colors in our house. I applied two coats very quickly, then a third and fourth over subsequent days. The paint still looked bad. It was going onto the wall a whole lot better, though, because I got a roller with a 1/4" nap.
5 coats later, and the paint still looks bad. Josef got home last night from yet another work trip and I leveled with him: I hated the paint color. He asked what I wanted instead, and I told him I wanted it to be green. He, in exhaustion from travel, shook his head, told me to pick a paint color, and go with it. Later on, though, we did agree on Asparagus by Behr, and that I shall buy on my way home. I'm very excited! I think it will look a million times better AND go on to the wall better because it won't be a yellow color. We and other friends have had trouble with yellow paint. We painted three walls of our living room Kayak yellow by Ralph Lauren. Yes, it felt snooty to buy Ralph Lauren paint, but the color was the absolute best color choice for the room and the painting contains it. We used it first, and though it turned out a million times better than the gold in the kitchen, it did take several coats of primer and paint to get it looking the way it should. Then we painted the fourth wall of the living room - an accent wall - the same sky blue that is in the painting. It was Behr paint, but I don't recall its name at the moment. It went on like a dream! It took less paint and less fuss, and it looks gorgeous.
We also painted the front entry way, front tv room, and hallway to the kitchen a rich dark blue that also goes well with the painting. We did this at the same exact time as the kitchen paint, using the exact same paint base, and yet the dark blue went on as beautifully and with as much ease as the sky blue had. Amazing. So, here we find ourselves sick of painting, but more knowledgeable than we were when 2008 began. :)
On to a green kitchen! I can't wait to see it when it's done and I can have my kitchen back!
I know it's unusual to celebrate defeat, but I'm doing just that. Our kitchen, lovely and wonderful as it is, has been the source of much frustration in the Henschen household as of late. We tried to paint the walls of the kitchen a golden yellow, and we tried two different shades: Behr's Goldfish and then Behr's Yam. Both went on the wall with as much ease as you'd expect when you try to lift a 300 lb greased pig. Yep, you get the idea. It looked like pooh.
We gave up once and went back to white primer, instead of going forth with our golden mess. It was around this time that I started dropping strong hints that I wasn't sold on the gold. It just didn't seem to flow as well in our color scheme/design plan as we had orginally anticipated. It seemed too bright, too off-palate. It did not go at all with the painting we used to select the other colors. Josef has had a lot of travel for work, so I've been on my own with the kitchen being out of sorts. I decided to give the paint color one more try, just to see if maybe it would mellow out and blend well with the other colors in our house. I applied two coats very quickly, then a third and fourth over subsequent days. The paint still looked bad. It was going onto the wall a whole lot better, though, because I got a roller with a 1/4" nap.
5 coats later, and the paint still looks bad. Josef got home last night from yet another work trip and I leveled with him: I hated the paint color. He asked what I wanted instead, and I told him I wanted it to be green. He, in exhaustion from travel, shook his head, told me to pick a paint color, and go with it. Later on, though, we did agree on Asparagus by Behr, and that I shall buy on my way home. I'm very excited! I think it will look a million times better AND go on to the wall better because it won't be a yellow color. We and other friends have had trouble with yellow paint. We painted three walls of our living room Kayak yellow by Ralph Lauren. Yes, it felt snooty to buy Ralph Lauren paint, but the color was the absolute best color choice for the room and the painting contains it. We used it first, and though it turned out a million times better than the gold in the kitchen, it did take several coats of primer and paint to get it looking the way it should. Then we painted the fourth wall of the living room - an accent wall - the same sky blue that is in the painting. It was Behr paint, but I don't recall its name at the moment. It went on like a dream! It took less paint and less fuss, and it looks gorgeous.
We also painted the front entry way, front tv room, and hallway to the kitchen a rich dark blue that also goes well with the painting. We did this at the same exact time as the kitchen paint, using the exact same paint base, and yet the dark blue went on as beautifully and with as much ease as the sky blue had. Amazing. So, here we find ourselves sick of painting, but more knowledgeable than we were when 2008 began. :)
On to a green kitchen! I can't wait to see it when it's done and I can have my kitchen back!
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Old Hymns have been my friends lately...
I take very seriously the season of Lent. A lot of people, upon learning this about me, retort (seriously, they retort) that Lent is a Catholic thing. Nay, I tell you. It's catholic, as in universally Christian, as the lower-case c in "catholic" denotes. I grew up celebrating this season with my family. I don't remember exactly whether the current pastor at church pushed it one Sunday or if my older sisters just decided to do it, but I got it into my head before I turned 7 or so that I am a practicer of Lent. Every year, the Sunday before Lent began a three-day contemplation over what item of comfort or lust or entertainment to give up. We certainly weren't going to fast. We are a family that likes to eat too much, to be honest. Usually, when we were younger, we gave up chocolate, making the arrival of the oh-so-Christian Easter Bunny all the more salient. As I grew older, I took it a little more seriously. I gave up tv or something else. In college, I got pretty intense (who doesn't?) and really stepped it up religiously-speaking by once giving up instant messenger and, junior year, giving up carbs.
It wasn't until after college that I heard folks talking about taking on a practice for Lent, rather than giving up something: writing a note to someone, praying for someone different each day, or some other sort of way of sacrificing your own form of selfishness.
This year, I find myself pudgy beyond comfort and cannot bear the idea of growing any bigger. I really am angry with myself for not losing weight when I have every reason in the world to be in great shape: a great neighborhood to walk in - and, indeed, a dog to walk in it!, a free gym to use a work, stairs in my house, music to dance to, a campus to walk in, coaching cheerleading, a house to keep clean, etc. I find that once I start to lose any weight, I cave in to my old behavior of saying, "Oh, my clothes are fitting better, so I can go ahead and eat that candy or drink that wine." Enough. I owe it to myself mentally and physically to be sacrificial enough to stave off lapsing yet again. Yes, it's selfish to focus on my own temple during Lent. I fully admit it. What am I giving up? I'm giving up comfort: no bread, no pasta, nothing that was created using flour, eggs, and butter - so that means cookies, too. I'm giving up sedatives, i.e., alcohol. That's going to be MUCH harder than bread/pasta/cookies. I don't think I'm an alkie or anything, but I do like to unwind on the weekends, and I find that helps. Plus, I enjoy it, so giving it up means also sacrificing something that brings me pleasure. If it means I shed I few pounds in the next 38 days, so be it. I must be strong.
So you're maybe wondering why I titled this blog about old hymns and if I am going to talk about them. Well, here ya are. There have been a few hymns that have been stuck on repeat in my mind that I grew up singing at my little bitty church in South Carolina. They are Oldies but Goodies. One is called "Sweet Hour of Prayer" and it celebrates the consolation we find while gathered for worship: it "calls us from a world a prayer" and, "in seasons of distress and grief/ My soul has often found relief" at church. The other song, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" has been on my mind more so, because it describes the "privilege to carry everything to God in prayer" because you "will find a solace there." Both of these hymns I learned as elderly Mimi Searight plunked on the "downstairs" piano (the "upstairs" piano was in our sanctuary, which was, not surprisingly, upstairs). I didn't really think about them much when I was younger, but instead I focused more on singing them well. Now I take them in cerebrally - in fact, they seem to be attacking me. They came out of nowhere! That's the amazing thing about God. There's just no time to grow complacent in my faith, and the practices of attending church and prayer should be done with gusto and indeed with a sense of gratitude for their availability as tools to grow in relationship with God. The ideas in these songs, and others I learned in those formative years, are the spine of my faith. They comfort me when I wake at night. They sing themselves in my minds ear during worship. They remind me of how utterly simple belief is as a concept and how the promises of God are so good they can't be ignored or postponed.
It's with these thoughts I enter into Lent, yet again, with a sobered mind and a soul full of hope. I pray that God grants me eyes to see the rich blessings of this world and the chances that my hands need to take up God's work for me. May I hear the call when I am summoned. May I express with joy, with my utterly small-yet-large life, how grateful I am that I am called a child of God!
It wasn't until after college that I heard folks talking about taking on a practice for Lent, rather than giving up something: writing a note to someone, praying for someone different each day, or some other sort of way of sacrificing your own form of selfishness.
This year, I find myself pudgy beyond comfort and cannot bear the idea of growing any bigger. I really am angry with myself for not losing weight when I have every reason in the world to be in great shape: a great neighborhood to walk in - and, indeed, a dog to walk in it!, a free gym to use a work, stairs in my house, music to dance to, a campus to walk in, coaching cheerleading, a house to keep clean, etc. I find that once I start to lose any weight, I cave in to my old behavior of saying, "Oh, my clothes are fitting better, so I can go ahead and eat that candy or drink that wine." Enough. I owe it to myself mentally and physically to be sacrificial enough to stave off lapsing yet again. Yes, it's selfish to focus on my own temple during Lent. I fully admit it. What am I giving up? I'm giving up comfort: no bread, no pasta, nothing that was created using flour, eggs, and butter - so that means cookies, too. I'm giving up sedatives, i.e., alcohol. That's going to be MUCH harder than bread/pasta/cookies. I don't think I'm an alkie or anything, but I do like to unwind on the weekends, and I find that helps. Plus, I enjoy it, so giving it up means also sacrificing something that brings me pleasure. If it means I shed I few pounds in the next 38 days, so be it. I must be strong.
So you're maybe wondering why I titled this blog about old hymns and if I am going to talk about them. Well, here ya are. There have been a few hymns that have been stuck on repeat in my mind that I grew up singing at my little bitty church in South Carolina. They are Oldies but Goodies. One is called "Sweet Hour of Prayer" and it celebrates the consolation we find while gathered for worship: it "calls us from a world a prayer" and, "in seasons of distress and grief/ My soul has often found relief" at church. The other song, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" has been on my mind more so, because it describes the "privilege to carry everything to God in prayer" because you "will find a solace there." Both of these hymns I learned as elderly Mimi Searight plunked on the "downstairs" piano (the "upstairs" piano was in our sanctuary, which was, not surprisingly, upstairs). I didn't really think about them much when I was younger, but instead I focused more on singing them well. Now I take them in cerebrally - in fact, they seem to be attacking me. They came out of nowhere! That's the amazing thing about God. There's just no time to grow complacent in my faith, and the practices of attending church and prayer should be done with gusto and indeed with a sense of gratitude for their availability as tools to grow in relationship with God. The ideas in these songs, and others I learned in those formative years, are the spine of my faith. They comfort me when I wake at night. They sing themselves in my minds ear during worship. They remind me of how utterly simple belief is as a concept and how the promises of God are so good they can't be ignored or postponed.
It's with these thoughts I enter into Lent, yet again, with a sobered mind and a soul full of hope. I pray that God grants me eyes to see the rich blessings of this world and the chances that my hands need to take up God's work for me. May I hear the call when I am summoned. May I express with joy, with my utterly small-yet-large life, how grateful I am that I am called a child of God!
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